Pity poor Hillary:
Former President Bill Clinton yesterday complained that “it’s just not fair” the way his wife, presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is being depicted for her controversial Iraq war vote.
Speaking to hundreds of supporters on conference call, the former president said, “I don’t have a problem with anything Barack Obama [has] said on this,” but “to characterize Hillary and Obama’s positions on the war as polar opposites is ludicrous.
“This dichotomy that’s been set up to allow him to become the raging hero of the anti-war crowd on the Internet is just factually inaccurate.”
The ex-president’s aggressive defense of his wife’s position revealed frustration in the Clinton camp over how the issue is playing into the already-overheated presidential campaign.
On a conference call with Hillraisers, Sen. Clinton’s biggest donors, which The Hill listened to after being provided the call-in information, the former president said there was a stark difference between those who voted for the Iraq resolution and those who wanted to go to war.
In response to a question from one of the supporters on the phone about explaining Hillary Clinton’s Iraq vote to undecided voters, the former president jumped in front of former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe, saying, “Let me answer this.”
He said he had re-read the Iraq resolution last week, and that his wife had voted only for “coercive inspections.” Clinton justified his wife’s refusal to apologize for her vote by explaining that she was acting out of concern that future presidents might need similar language authorizing “coercive inspections to avoid conflict.”
“It’s just not fair to say that people who voted for the resolution wanted war,” Clinton said.
True. Hillary didn’t want war. Her statement on the floor of the Senate made that clear. But she also said this:
Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.
Only an imbecile would take George W. Bush at his word. And Hillary is anything but an imbecile. She said all the right things to cover her ass, but she knew what Cheney wanted and she knew what she was handing him. The Big Dog can cry me a river. His wife gave the keys to the neo-cons and she knew better. Just like Kerry, she thought her future presidential viability depended on getting on the right side of a war. It worked for Al Gore back in 1991-1992. I doubt it will work out any better for Hillary than it did for John Kerry.
Well, she isn’t to poor if the only event she is willing to hold in the most Democratic and politically active city in Texas is one with a starting price of $500. I guess she doesn’t like voters, political activists, or college students.
Just Say No To ATM Hillary
They have been bleeding old clintonistas to Obama and can’t make a dent in our world where the ‘base’ resides.
But, what Big Dog doesn’t understand is a few things.
It ain’t 1992 and we have progressed while they are still stuck in 90s think.
Hillary has alot more issues than just the war. Let’s begin with the DLC.
Establishment and authoritarian vs. new ideas and energy and a new direction.
Even the speeches are just the same old platitudes and red meat from Hillary. Obama gives us so much more when we listen to him. he lifts us up.
I did figure they were getting jittery when Penn went off on a tagent the other night. And Bill’s been whining about the NY times – a clinton paper, about Obama’s stand on the war and his turning up in person (which he wasn’t going to do) in Selma.
I’m with you for the most part but I had to laugh at the idea that the NYT’s was a Clinton paper. Wen Ho Lee? Whitewater?
I don’t live in NY but, I kept reading that the NY times were pro Hillary and that they had this big todo with Bill saying they loved Obama more. The NY times can’t even find facts let alone be pro democrat.
they will endorse Hillary if she wins the primary, but they dogged her husband relentlessly when he was President.
because she wants to be President and is a big fan of the imperial presidency. Bet she kinda likes the unitary executive theory too…
I’m tired of being lied to. I’m tired of them not even bothering to take the time to come up with good lies.
My boss is 87. He is learning to use email. He has to call me or my coworker in all the time to forward emails, or add attachments, or for just about anything. The point is, he is trying as hard as he can to help his clients and learn the new methods of communication.
I saw Christopher Dodd on here and elsewhere trying to reach out to us internet junkies in a way we could relate to. He set up a video of himself blogging, how cute is that! I saw Elizabeth Edwards on dKos. I’ve seen Kerry on dKos. Hillary Clinton got a bunch of techies to start up a web site with so-called “chat”, which is censored and unresponsive. She treats the intelligent left like we are children, just like she treats her constituents. She doesn’t post on the blogs, she doesn’t answer real questions truthfully, she does zip to reach out to the left, and she actively supports right wing propaganda.
She has made it clear that she is not interested in real discourse, just like the chimpenfuerer.
you reminded me with the unresponsive to her blogs and such. I was on Obama 08 and sent an email about some involvement in the campaign questions. Surprise! I got an answer from them in within the evening! I was shocked. I thought they would send something in a few days.
Plastic Hillary. That is what Bill and the Clinton DLC turned her into. Her campaign can live and die with they created.
Their smugness, their skills at raising cash, it’s Junior all over again. Neither clan likes being questioned or crossed. It concerns me that with so much before us, we’ll be fighting on two fronts: defeating the current administration, and mending the Dems into a diverse yet cohesive force that won’t split apart before election day. And the Clintons will be right there, trying to force their way to the head of the line, bringing nothing new except the manufactured message that she (they) deserves it. The possibilites are grim: fatigue sets in; people who would otherwise stay informed and speak out will simply walk away from voting or even caring.
There aren’t any anti-war Democrats in the race.
Hillary, Obama, Edwards…only regret their vote to authorise the invasion of Iraq because it turned out badly.
If it had turned out well, they’d be claiming the credit.
My prediction–mark it well–is that the next President will keep the United States in Iraq, perhaps with a reduced force, but enough troops to make sure that the US has a “significant military presence”.
Notice that it doesn’t matter if the next president’s last name is Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Romney, Giuliani, or McCain.
There is only one party in the United States, and that is the Imperialist Party.
Democrats might favour a kinder, gentler imperialism, but it doesn’t matter much to poor folk in the “Third World” whether they have a soft-soled shoe or a boot on their neck.
Forget about asking for a third party. I’d like a SECOND party, please.
You are factually challenged. Obama didn’t vote for the war resolution period. He also ran against the war.
I forgot, Senator Obama is the Saviour. The Infallible One.
Make no mistake about it: Obama’s objection, and the objection of the Democratic Party “leadership” as a whole, is about Bush’s mismanagement of the Iraq invasion and occupation (i.e., “It could have all worked out beautifully IF ONLY…”), not the imperialist, illegal invasion itself.
I give you this, written about Obama as a candidate for the Illinois Senate in 2004:
That’s some peacenik, there. “Surgical strikes” on Iran that would blow up the entire region and kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iranians.
Aw, give
peace“surgical strikes” a chance!In his own words:
So…indefinite commitment to keeping US troops in Iraq? At a reduced level, perhaps, but still there.
Easy to say when you weren’t sitting in the Senate.
Bush is “sincere” but “misguided”. And once again, a very telling statement: “we did not create the…internationalf ramework that would have allowed success….”
Ok, let’s let this straight, Senator Obama: the occupation of Iraq was NEVER going to work, no matter how well-managed. This is not the age of the British Empire, circa 1880: the Iraqis were ALWAYS going to be happy about the overthrow of Saddam and were ALWAYS going to be unhappy about an American occupation and/or pro-American puppet government. Put down your copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” and repeat after me: “It is illegal and immoral to invade and occupy other sovereign nations unless they attacked you first.” Yeesh.
And the capper:
Obama SAYS he would have voted against authorising Bush to attack Iraq, BUT now that the US is in Iraq, Obama opposes establishing a timetable for withdrawal.
All information from here:
Obama on the Issues
Now, given all that, I do admit that Obama might, in the 2008 race, be the best of a bad lot. Let us remember that former Senator John Edwards has apologised for his vote authorising the invasion of Iraq, but he DID vote for it at the time, even though many of us “ordinary” citizens knew the “evidence” justifyng the invasion was a raft of lies and half-truths.
But can we please stop pretending that President Obama is going to get us out of Iraq? He’s already threatened to attack Iran and Pakistan, the first country a nuclear power wannabe and the second one an actual nuclear power. He’s already expressed sympathy for President Bush’s sincerity and mourned that the occupation wasn’t better-managed.
President Obama, President Clinton, President Edwards, President Romney, President Giuliani, President McCain, it’s all the same: the National Security State marches on and the US retains its imperial possessions.
Remember why Bush invaded Iraq and you will understand why the US is not leaving there. The US has a voracious appetite for the world’s dwindling supply of oil. The corporations that finance both the Democratic and Republican parties have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the four years since the invasion, and they are just getting started with their profit-taking.
US corporations have signed 25-year agreements to take Iraqi oil. Who will protect their investments? Iraqi soldiers? Not bloody likely. US soldiers will be misused as mercenaries to guard corporate interests abroad, as they have been so many times in the past.
Let us PLEASE stop all this talk of a US withdrawal from Iraq under ANY President. It just isn’t going to happen. If President Obama tried (which he won’t), he’d be ruined, impeached, or assassinated–you pick which one, it’s all the same in the end. And Obama’s a smart man who knows very well the rules of the game he is playing.
Northcountry’s comment is a telling one. It’s a big mistake to choose a candidate on the base of one or more things he/she did in the past. YOu must use those things to infer the mode in which the candidate will operate. I heard someone on the media say last evening “Americans don’t pay much attention to that.” Sure they don’t; the media don’t talk about it at all.
I’ve been trying to recall what there was about Bush that would have presaged his current mode of government, and I’ve concluded there wasn’t a clue. That’s because this Cheney-led government isn’t reflective of Bush much at all–except when he gets paranoid and backed into a corner.
At her roots, Hillary Clinton believes the president must have the power to act unilaterally–much more so than the other candidates (as far as I can see at this point.) I think that’s the root of her vote, and she doesn’t want to limit herself in the future. That’s why, although I agree with most of her policy positions (other than the war), I would not vote for her in a primary.